


Anthropologist's Report: On the Nature of the Family Units of Sentient Machines From Outer Space

by dragonofdispair



Series: Roads [15]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-01
Updated: 2008-05-01
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More paperwork… an anthropologist needs to earn his keep after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anthropologist's Report: On the Nature of the Family Units of Sentient Machines From Outer Space

You're not going to be able to keep this a secret from the families of those involved for much longer, assuming of course that secrecy hasn't already been compromised. Further, trying to keep them secret, forbidding them from telling the families of "their" humans will very likely anger them. The reason is:

Family

Their concept of family is one of those things that don't translate into human languages well. The reason for this is that, quite simply, no transformer is in any way biologically related to another. Families are chosen and defined by the depth of friendships.

They do have "creators", which could in the loosest definition of the term be considered a biological parent. But from what i've been able to discuss, a transformer's creator generally has very little to do with his creation once a spark has been put into the body and accepted the programming. Most of the Autobots have long since deleted the name of their creator from their memory banks--the one exception being Optimus Prime, though he admits that, as he's gone through at least one complete reformatting, he isn't sure whether the name he remembers is the name of his original creator or that of the Transformer primarily responsible for his reformat.

Somehow there is also the possibility of "Brothers created" but how that works, they are unable to explain. They say that if a set of brothers ever make it to earth, it will be obvious what they mean by that, but since none of them have been created as or with brothers, they can't really tell me more than such brothers are linked by their sparks (as a human might put it, on the level of their souls).

Instead, the originally militarily organized group consisting of Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee and Jazz became a family unit through deep friendships built over thousands of years. If another full group makes it to earth, most likely that group will be another separate, full family. Jazz's death hit them a lot harder than they let on. All of them are still in mourning and will likely to continue to be for a very long time, as humans consider time.

How Scorponok fits and will fit into their family unit is unclear even to them. Everything about his situation is unusual and unknown to them. We're all figuring it out as it happens.

Back humans and their families though. Sam Witwicky, Mikaela Banes, Captain Lennox, and, to a lesser extent myself and rest of Lennox's team are being adopted into the Autobots' family unit. Such "adoptions" have nothing to do with age, since Transformers don't regard physical age as any having sort of importance. (That's a concept too complicated to go into at the moment. I don't understand it myself yet. For now, sufficed to say, a Transformer can be considered a child, a "sparkling" for just a few human weeks or centuries as they count them.) But when a person is adopted into a unit, the unit expects to adopt the adoptee's entire previous unit.

That means that in adopting their new human family members, the Autobots will also be expecting to add anyone they see as having similar emotional bonds to their new family members to the whole unit.

This probably doesn't mean much for the families and friends of myself, Mikaela, and the rest of Lennox's team. The men and I are all single, don't have many friends outside of the group already in the know, and no observable contact with our "creators". Mikaela has a deep emotional bond with her father, but no contact with him, and seems to resent and dislike her current caretaker. To the Autobots, this means adopting all of us is is "accepting a wanderer into a group".

Will Lennox and Sam Witwicky, on the other hand, have families already. Lennox--his wife and child. Sam--his parents, and his closest human friend, Miles Lancaster. The Autobots are not going to want to sever those bonds, which, among their species, accepting a member of another family unit without accepting that member's entire existing unit does sever the existing bonds. Quite painfully in most cases. This is further complicated by Sam and Lennox being the ones most completely accepted--Sam is even being considered a "brother found" to Bumblebee.

So the Autobots want to add "their" humans' families to their family, and I'm not sure that there's anything that could stop them from doing so. Which means, the Autobots as a "government secret" isn't going to last long as far as those close to them are concerned.

  
end report

 

  
Memo from Secretary Keller to Captain Lennox and Samuel Witwicky:

The following people have been cleared to know about and interact with the Autobots in non military situations. The existence of the Autobots is to be revealed to these people only at the insistence of the Autobots themselves.

Mrs. Sarah Lennox

Miss Annabelle Lennox

Mr. Ronald Witwicky

Mrs. Judith Witwicky

Mr. Miles Lancaster

 

  
Will Lennox's response: "Umm...that's good. I'd kinda been avoiding telling anyone that Ironhide told Sarah and Anna about himself months ago."

  
Sam Witwicky's response: "Okay. Cool. Mom's gonna freak though."

 

  
fini


End file.
